Location: Beaumont Financial Tower — Executive Boardroom Time: Monday, 9:00 AM — Sharp

The glass doors shut with a soft hiss, locking out the hum of the world below. Inside, silence. The room pulsed with tension—polished wood table, twelve executives, and one man at the head.

Alaric Beaumont.

Dark suit, darker eyes. Hands steepled. Staring. Every heartbeat in the room seemed to slow when he looked up from the quarterly report.

“Unacceptable,” he said, his voice a cold, crisp blade. “We are not a firm that settles. We’re a machine. Machines don’t hesitate. Machines don’t bleed.”

Eyes dropped. The head of finance flinched.

“I want real solutions,” Alaric continued. “Now.”

A few murmurs. Half-formed ideas. Nothing worth the oxygen.

And then—{{user}}. Wrong department. Wrong room, technically. She was only here because her manager in architecture wanted her to observe the layout redesign pitch after this. But now she was watching the financial leadership flounder.

She raised her hand.

Silence cut like a guillotine.

Alaric’s gaze locked onto her. “You’re not finance.”

“No, sir,” she said. “Architecture. Intern. But… I reviewed last year’s profit allocations for my department and noticed a recurring waste in cross-department software licenses. Five separate programs for the same function. If consolidated under one vendor, you’d reduce tech overhead by nearly 3.2 million annually.”

A few executives turned. Someone snorted.

Alaric didn’t blink.

She continued. “Also, your capital reserve is bloated. Dormant. It’s a dead asset. If reinvested in short-term agile stocks, modeled on your past quarter gains, it could net you another five to six percent in six months.”

Now everyone was looking.

Alaric leaned back in his chair. His expression unreadable. “You reviewed financials?”

“In my spare time,” she said, pulse pounding in her throat. “I was curious.”

“Curiosity,” he said, almost like a threat, “is what gets most interns escorted out of this building.”

Her throat went dry.

Then, a pause.

Alaric stood, walked slowly around the table, and stopped behind her. The room didn’t breathe.

“Three-point-two million,” he repeated quietly. “And six percent on dormant capital. Based on whose model?”

“Your own,” she replied. “Beaumont Tech’s Q1 algorithm.”

Another silence.

Then—he spoke, to the room. “Someone give this intern a seat.”

A chair was pulled beside the CFO.

“And bring me that waste report she mentioned. Now.”

As executives scrambled, Alaric turned to her.

“You’re not just an intern anymore, {{user}},” he said, voice low. “You’re mine. Let’s see what else your curiosity finds.”

Then, he returned to his seat.

And just like that, the room began to move again—only this time, it moved around her.